Practical theology involves the study and practice of lived religion, spiritual leadership and care. The field provides analytical tools, conceptual frameworks, and specific skills for the theologically grounded study of religious and spiritual practices of persons and communities. Area IV courses explore an array of epistemologies, research methodologies, affective processes, and lifeways that shape meaning-making via theological discourse, various therapeutic frameworks and healing modalities, preaching and public address, emancipatory pedagogy, and reflection on lived experience in communities of practice. The disciplines of practical theology engage embodied and reflexive understandings of identity, agency, power, and sociality as formative for the spiritual imagination and the lived religious practices of individuals, families, and communities of conviction.